Gordon Brown: Our international development priorities for the G7 are to support universal education for all children, including holding an international summit on the subject on 2 May, and to extend our new vaccination facility to malaria to prevent 1 million unnecessary deaths each year. Our domestic priorities as G7 members are to ensure low inflation and I can tell the House that we have today accepted the public sector pay review body reports to be implemented in two stages, and the armed forces in full, from 1 April. The overall awards come within the inflation target, at 1.9 per cent., demonstrating our total determination to maintain discipline and stability and to continue with an 11(th) year of sustained economic growth.

Barry Sheerman: Does my right hon. Friend agree that giving education to 80 million young people is not the only priority for the G7? I agree that the Government have done much work in this area, but can he push the G7 to ensure that the money and resources get to the children, and does not bypass them and get into the hands of corrupt Governments and officials—that it reaches bodies such as non-governmental organisations that deliver on the ground?

George Osborne: Of course the European Union can do things to tackle climate change: it does not mean that we have to give up all our sovereignty to let it do them —[ Interruption. ] Now listen, I am asking the Chancellor about the views of Deborah Mattinson. I am surprised that he cannot agree because she is his personal pollster and the event at which she was speaking was called "Brown's first 100 days" —[ Interruption. ]

George Osborne: And only newly promoted as well.
	Now look, that is not the only such event this week. What does the Chancellor say to the former Home Secretary, who served with him in the Cabinet, who said yesterday that thanks to the Chancellor, the Labour Government was sleepwalking to disaster? Does Mrs. Rochester agree?

Dawn Butler: Does my right hon. Friend agree that investment in housing and social housing is important to helping people get onto the housing ladder? That is especially important in my constituency, where average earnings are around £20,000. What would be the effect on the social housing budget if overall public expenditure were to be reduced by the implementation of a third fiscal rule?

Shona McIsaac: I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. Is he aware that in January 2000 the unemployment rate in the Cleethorpes constituency was running at 5.8 per cent., but that this January it was down to 3.4 per cent.? That is excellent news, although obviously more needs to be done to reduce that rate further. What effect does he think that scrapping the new deal would have on maintaining full employment?

Theresa May: I join the Leader of the House in his best wishes to all Welsh colleagues, and thank him for acceding to our request for a debate on Welsh affairs today. I also thank him for giving us all the future business.
	The Government's consultation on post office closures is due to end next week. Will the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that the results will be announced to the House in a statement before they are given to the media?
	It was good to see the Chancellor make a rare visit to the House for Treasury questions just before the business question. On Tuesday he gave yet another leadership campaign speech, and said that immigrants should do community work before they become British citizens—but this policy was blocked by the Chancellor himself four years ago, on the grounds of cost. On Wednesday the Minister for Children and Families announced that the Chancellor's youth opportunity card would be abandoned, again on the grounds of cost. It seems that the prudent Chancellor is not so prudent when it comes to his own leadership ambitions. May we have a debate on the Chancellor's policy proposals?
	The Chancellor seems to be talking about all sorts of issues these days—perhaps that is why his colleagues are so ready to be open about what they think of him—but on the many issues for which he is responsible, he is surprisingly reticent. The Leader of the House will, as Chairman of the Cabinet Committee on the Olympic games, be aware of the budget for 2012. First, we were told that the games would cost £2.35 billion, then we were told they would cost £3.3 billion. Now we are told that the cost could run to £9 billion. Will the Chancellor come to the House to make a statement? He likes talking about hosting the football World cup. Why is he so shy about the Olympics?
	Another matter that the Chancellor is not keen to talk about is the soaring deficits in NHS trusts. Three quarters of primary care trusts are restricting access to treatment, half are delaying operations and 60 per cent. of acute hospital trusts are already closing wards. All we have had from the Government is a guide on how to spin the news to the media. May we have a debate on the Chancellor's NHS cuts?
	Next week we will debate reform of the House of Lords. I am grateful to the Leader of the House for setting out the procedure that will be followed for the voting. House of Lords reform is another issue in which the Chancellor does not seem to be interested. Since he was elected on a manifesto promising
	"to make the House of Lords more democratic and representative",
	there have been 21 separate votes on that it. How many times has the Chancellor voted? Not once. Will the Leader of the House make a statement on what will happen to Lords reform when the Chancellor completes his smooth transition? You never know—perhaps next week we will see him voting for an entirely elected House. After all, that is about the only way he can avoid giving the Prime Minister a peerage.
	We have a Prime Minister who is in office and not in power. We have a Chancellor in the office next door longing for power. People want to see Cabinet Ministers running the country, not running political campaigns. Everyone is sick of "waiting for Gordo", but if the Prime Minister will not go now, should not the Chancellor just get on with his job?

Jack Straw: She did not read it; she made it up—it was entirely spontaneous. That is the problem.
	The right hon. Lady must have a crush on my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. She kept obsessing about him in every other sentence, and she has just had an hour of ogling him. It is curious. Apparently he never comes to the House—but he has just been here, answering questions in his normal robust style.
	The right hon. Lady wants a debate on spending. We can have a debate on tax and spending any time. There will four whole days of opportunity to debate tax and spending in the Budget debate. That will be a great opportunity for us to debate the latest shift in approach by the Conservative shadow Chancellor. According to  The Daily Telegraph, which, as we know, is accurate when it comes to the Conservative party, members of the shadow Cabinet have been "read the Riot Act" by the shadow Chancellor and told to stop making spending pledges without checking with him first. I am not surprised, because last week Grant Thornton said that the increase in spending promised by the Conservatives was £8.9 billion. [Hon. Members: "Is this business questions?"] They ask whether this is business questions, but this is the question that I was asked. I was asked about spending, and I have given the answer.
	On the costs of the Olympics, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport will make a statement—[Hon. Members: "When?"]. As soon as we have settled the issue. The Conservatives backed the Olympic bid, and now they are trying to back away from it. The simple fact of the matter is that the Stratford site is one of the most complex anywhere, and the costs are bound to be revised in the light of experience. There will be a statement as soon as we have pinned those costs down.
	The right hon. Lady asked about deficits in the national health service. She will know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health recently made a statement saying that, allowing for the use of contingency, it looks as though there will be a small surplus this year of £13 million, so I do not know where the right hon. Lady got her point from.
	The right hon. Lady then made some spurious comments about debate taking place in the Labour party. There is a debate in the Labour party about its future— [Interruption.] She talks about leadership campaigns, but I have to tell her that that debate is comradely in the extreme compared to what I read on the blog of the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries) about what is going on— [Interruption.] No, this week, too.  [Interruption.]

Wayne David: I thank my right hon. Friend for his best wishes on St. David's day. He will be aware that on 3 May there are elections to the Welsh Assembly. Two of the candidates are members of a party called Forward Wales. However, they are standing in that election as Independents. Can we have a debate on whether that deceitful practice is in breach of electoral law?

Stewart Jackson: The Leader of the House will be aware of early-day motion 964:
	 [That this House views with concern the plans to cut the number of employees of HM Revenue and Customs in Leicestershire; notes that this will result in the loss of more than 300 jobs; believes that there are already problems with the level of service in this area which would only worsen with a significant cut in staff numbers and budget; and calls on the Paymaster General to reconsider the decision.]
	It was tabled by the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), who is in his place, and relates to the review of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and the impact that that is having on the abolition of jobs, particularly front-line jobs? Will it be possible to have a debate on that? Will the right hon. Gentleman have a friendly word with the Paymaster General about the criteria used in identifying the job losses across the country, which are causing concern to Members on both sides of the House?

Jack Straw: There are plenty of opportunities to question my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General, including Treasury questions, which has just finished. Apparently the Conservative party, as from yesterday, is supporting a fairly tight public spending regime. All Governments will be faced with the need to reconfigure operations such as Revenue and Customs in light of the fact that the operations have merged and as improved technology is reducing the need for some jobs in some areas. The difference between any Government, led by the hon. Gentleman's party and ours is that under this Government we have a buoyant economy and good investment in retraining to provide alternative opportunities for any people who are displaced.

Jack Straw: I am happy that my hon. Friend raises that, because getting to a period of stability in the NHS will enable primary care trusts to identify the medical care needs of people in their area and the most appropriate provision. There will be a certain amount of creative competition between different providers. That has always been the case, but it always been sub rosa and I think that it is better if it is explicit. As a result, we will be able to change the culture of some NHS establishments to ensure that they are absolutely focused on their overwhelming priority—the patient.

Clive Betts: My right hon. Friend may not be aware that last wee, I had a phone call from Mrs Anne Parker, a constituent from Basegreen in Sheffield. She was extremely distraught at a story in  The Mirror to the effect that, as a result of the Hills report, all council tenants and arm's-length management organisation tenants faced the possibility of losing their security of tenure. Will my right hon. Friend arrange for a debate on that very important report into social housing by John Hills, so that Ministers can make it absolutely clear that, under this Government, there is no possibility of council, ALMO or housing association tenants losing their security of tenure?

Keith Vaz: May we have an urgent statement or a debate on the very serious allegations in today's  The Times by Chief Superintendent Dizaei, who states that he was subjected to a campaign of harassment by his fellow officers in the Met, that his phone was bugged and that there was an investigation by 44 officers that cost millions of pounds? He also states that the Mayor of London's race adviser, Lee Jasper, was also the subject of bugging. These are very serious matters because the chief superintendent is the borough commander of Hounslow. I know that the Leader of the House was committed to diversity when he was Home Secretary. This matter creates real problems for the image of the Met, so could we please have a statement?

John Penrose: In common, I suspect, with many other hon. Members, I am receiving strong representations from people who are studying English as a second language, and who are worried that the Government plan to cut funding for those courses. Given the Chancellor's professed support for Britishness and citizenship, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) alluded, and the recommendations in the Leech report about the importance of language as a preparation for work, is there any possibility of having a debate on this important issue?

Jack Straw: My hon. Friend makes a strong point. My two Scottish colleagues who are currently sitting on the Front Bench—the Defence Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr. Ingram), who is the longest-serving Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence ever in the history of the world, as he himself told me not long ago, have both endorsed that as a good idea. As an Englishman, I think that it is a good idea. In reply to the question, I cannot make an absolute promise, but we will look into that.

Chris Bryant: As is traditional, the Leader of the House has announced the business for the next two weeks, but he has announced only the main business; he has not announced any statements that there might be. Of course, many statements are responses to emergencies and nobody would expect there to be foreknowledge of those, but I suspect that there might be a Minister or two who already knows, or is almost certain, that they will make a statement within the next two weeks. Might it be possible for the Leader to start to make announcements in advance in respect of statements that he knows will definitely be given, for the better forewarning of the House and so that we do not get up in the morning and, by listening to the "Today" programme or watching the television news, hear that a Minister will make an announcement later in the day when no Members of this House have been informed of that? Might it be possible to send an e-mail? Instead of having a piece of paper stuck up outside the Chamber saying that there will be a statement later in the day, my right hon. Friend could arrange for e-mails to be sent to all Members.

Justine Greening: Can we have a debate on the robustness of the British crime survey? It is an annual survey that the Government put great store by in judging whether crime is rising or falling, yet it does not cover a variety of offences, ranging from commercial offences, murder—because the victims of that cannot be interviewed—and offences that it calls victimless, including drugs offences. Crucially, it also does not cover offences against people who are aged 16 and under because they are not interviewed as part of the survey. Can we have a debate on that matter, to try to discover how we can make the British crime survey to crime in today's Britain, rather than crime in the Britain of 1981 when it was established?

Mark Lancaster: As we have recently had a debate on buses, can we now have a debate on trains? Perhaps that would enable us to get to the bottom of why the Government seem to misunderstand, or misrepresent, why so few Virgin trains—in fact none—now stop at Milton Keynes during peak hours. Bizarrely, one train does stop, but only to set down passengers—it will not allow anybody on. When I asked the Secretary of State about that, he said that the issue was the platform length at Milton Keynes, but in a written answer last week he now says that there is nothing wrong with the platform length there. Reading between the lines, it is pretty clear that the Government's priority is those travelling from the north, but why should local people in Milton Keynes be discriminated against in that way?

Jack Straw: Although I have used the inter-city west coast main line for 30 years, I am sorry that I do not have the full details of the timetable in my head. However, I have been on plenty of trains that have stopped at Milton Keynes, both at peak hours and at off-peak hours, and both to pick up and to set down passengers. The hon. Gentleman should also be aware that as a result of our investment in the railway service, the inter-city west coast main line is more efficient, more punctual and far better patronised. I am surprised that he did not commend what I understand to be an almost definite plan to expand Milton Keynes railway station through the addition of a further platform—is that not correct?—in order to increase its capacity.

Adam Ingram: I agree entirely with that final point, and that is why so much effort is still being made in that regard. It is also why conditions are placed on the country's progression towards full EU and NATO membership. We are talking about brutal war criminals who must be brought to justice. In recent weeks, NATO has attempted to apply more pressure to achieve that objective, although I do not suppose that that was much reported in the media here.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) is also right about the timely action that we took in Kosovo. Some hon. Members criticised it, but it has proved to be the right thing to do. It is a matter for regret that this country did not act earlier in the 1990s. We paid a price for that, but more importantly, the people of Srebrenica and elsewhere paid a much heavier one.

Adam Ingram: I thank the hon. Gentleman for those remarks. Even today, when we see things happening, all of us must ask ourselves, "Is it right to intervene? How do we intervene? If we do go in, do we intervene as part of a UN, NATO or EU force, or as part of a coalition of the willing?"
	The hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) makes an important point about the war criminals. I repeat that an intense effort is being made to achieve the objective that he set out. If we knew where they were, they would be apprehended and brought to justice.

David Heath: I had the privilege of leading the international election monitoring mission to Bosnia at the recent elections, and I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for quoting my positive assessment on behalf of that mission. Whatever the political difficulties that undoubtedly persist in that country, I do not recognise the assessment of the security situation given by the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox).
	There is one outstanding issue—mine and explosive clearance along the old front line that runs close to Sarajevo—and I wonder whether British troops will still be involved in it. About two miles outside the town, huge areas of land still cannot be visited because of the presence of unexploded devices. Will the British Army contribute to that mine clearance operation?

Peter Hain: It highlights the fact that there is still a gap to be bridged. The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the challenge ahead, but the way to bridge that gap and improve on the improvements of the past 10 years, when there have been considerable increases in numeracy and literacy rates and in educational standards generally, is to invest more in education. The only way to invest more in education is by re-electing Labour in Westminster and in Cardiff bay.

David Davies: I will indeed support the Secretary of State on this point. Does he agree that it was absolutely disgraceful that senior members of Plaid Cymru demanded that the military be kept out of schools, when the military offers an excellent base for young people who want to learn the specialist skills that he mentioned. Does he agree that we should all support our armed forces in this country?

Peter Hain: I am always reluctant to agree with the hon. Gentleman, because it makes me wonder whether the position that I am taking is correct, but I have to say that he is absolutely right. What also interests me is the fact that the parliamentary leader of Plaid Cymru, the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd), signed an early-day motion in November opposing the entire defence review programme, and with it the jobs in Wales. I assume that the Plaid Cymru candidate in the Vale of Glamorgan is going to campaign on a programme of "send the jobs back, repatriate the defence training rationalisation investment, and have a fresh decision in London".

Peter Hain: The hon. Lady is right, but she ought also to bear in mind that we had huge growth in Wales over that period. Growth across the United Kingdom has been nearly 28 per cent., whereas emissions have gone up in single figures. They should not have gone up at all, but the fact that they have gone up by such a small proportion, compared with growth, shows that we are going in the right direction. We have to do more. The climate change levy, which was opposed by her party, is an important part of that, as is the drive towards renewable energy. I hope that she will have a word with her boss, the Leader of the Opposition, and ask him to change his mind about the Gwynt-y-Mor wind farm development. I do not know what the hon. Member for Clwyd, West (Mr. Jones) thinks about it. The development would involve 250 turbines and would have the capacity to power the electricity needs of 40 per cent. of Welsh homes. It is an important project and I hope that it will get all-party support.
	Marine, tidal and other renewable energies also offer enormous potential. The proposal for a Severn barrage, which is currently being assessed by the Sustainable Development Commission, could provide up to 5 per cent., and perhaps more, of Britain's entire electricity needs—all of it from a clean, green, renewable source. It is an excellent project and I hope that the go-ahead will be signalled in the forthcoming energy White Paper, following an assessment by the Sustainable Development Commission. The project will rely on private sector investment—I have met the consortium behind it—but it will need Government support in respect of planning and other arrangements. I hope that it goes ahead, because it will be a flagship project that will mean that Britain, and Wales, is serious about renewable energy agenda.

Lembit �pik: Although I agree with the Secretary of State that we should utilise the energy available from the Severn estuary, does he agree that we must not yet dismiss the alternative possibility of tidal lagoons? It is possible that they might even produce more energy than a barrage. I am not asking him to commit to one or the other, but I would like him to at least keep the door open when it comes to the dialogue that we initiated at a Welsh Grand Committee, so that we can make a comparison between the two alternatives.

Peter Hain: My direct answer to the hon. Gentleman is that we are campaigning for a majority Welsh Labour Government. As he has provoked me on that point, perhaps I might give a few quotes from his party leaders. The leader of Plaid Cymru in the Welsh Assembly, Ieuan Wyn Jones, said in an interview:
	I am perfectly prepared to lead a governmentan alternative government to Labourin the National Assembly
	When the interviewer asked him whether that would be a coalition Government, he replied:
	I am perfectly willing to do that.
	The only conceivable Opposition that Ieuan Wyn Jones wants to lead, as he told The Politics Show on BBC Wales on 10 December, is a Conservative-Liberal Democrat-Plaid Cymru coalition. That is the only alternative to Welsh Labour. After denying on Dragon's Eye on BBC Wales on 22 February 2007 that Plaid Cymru would ever enter a Tory-led coalition, the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy was challenged to rule it out categorically. His reply was very interesting:
	We will keep our options open...We will have to see what happens after the elections in May.

Peter Hain: The comparison is not relevant, but as the hon. Lady has asked me about the matter, I do not believe that list Members should be able to set up constituency offices in constituencies in which Assembly Members have been elected to do constituency work which is also undertaken by Members of Parliament. It is a matter for the Assembly: I was simply expressing my own view. As the hon. Lady has intervened to raise a matter originally raised by the hon. Member for Carmarthen, East and Dinefwr, may I offer her some Conservative views on the question of a Tory-led coalition? Nick Bourne, the Welsh Tory leader, said on 6 October 2006:
	There are discussions going on, of course there are, on an informal basis between parties about what is going to happen after the next election.
	I can offer the hon. Lady other quotes if she provokes me even further.

Peter Hain: I am ruling it out. There is no prospect of that at all. It is a matter for Rhodri Morgan and Welsh Labour Assembly Members, but I do not think that Welsh Labour would accept it. We shall leave the nationalists to get into bed with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, if that is what they want to do after the election and if the opportunity arises.
	The risk of a Tory-led coalition, or a Tory-Plaid Cymru-Liberal Democrat coalition in any guise, would have enormous consequences for Wales. There would be a huge risk to the record jobs and prosperity delivered under Labour; a huge risk to continuing investment in schools and health delivered under Labour; a huge risk to Wales continuing to go in the right direction, as it has done under Labour; a huge risk for businesses, families, a children, older people and sick people; and a huge risk for all the people of Wales. If the chaotic infighting and division that we witnessed during last December's budget fiasco were repeated in a Tory-led coalition Government, a cloud of uncertainty and instability would be cast over Wales. With such an atmosphere of risk, investors who flock to Wales would be driven away. Jobs that are now at a record high would disappear. Wales cannot afford to run such a huge risk.
	That huge risk comes not just from voting for the Conservatives, but from voting for Plaid Cymru, for the Liberal Democrats, and, indeed, from staying at home. Over the past 18 months, we have witnessed a dress rehearsal for a Tory-led coalition in the Assembly. Week in, week out, Plaid Cymru, the Liberal Democrats and the independents vote with the Tories to defeat the Welsh Labour Assembly Government. It is a short step from chaotic coalition in opposition to chaotic coalition in government. No wonder Plaid Cymru are trying to silence anyone who talks about their plans to join a Tory-led coalition, but its attempts to gag Welsh Labour and prevent us from talking about Plaid's dodgy backroom deals with the Tories will not succeed. No amount of bluster can conceal the fact that Plaid Cymru is plotting to enter a Tory-led coalition. The leader of Plaid Cymru in the Assembly, Ieuan Wyn Jones, has even said, as I reported earlier, that he is perfectly prepared to lead an alternative coalition Government.

Cheryl Gillan: That grandstanding from the hon. Gentleman, who is living in the past, is not unremarkable. Quite frankly, I prefer to look to the future, and we are proud of our record in Wales.
	It is time for Wales to have an alternativenot an alternative such as Plaid, which would tear Wales out of the heart of the United Kingdom, but an alternative that would put heart back into Wales with a revolution of social, corporate and personal responsibility. In the brief time available, I shall set out some of our hopes and aspirations for this valuable part of the UK.
	Despite Labour's false rhetoric, we are determined as a party to improve the national health service for everyoneand not help the few to opt out. We are committed to the NHS ideal and have ruled out any move towards an insurance-based system. My colleagues in the Assembly have already set out some exciting proposals to improve NHS performance in Wales. They have been making plans so that, if successful in the elections, they can move to ensure safe and speedy access to local and appropriate hospitals, access to modern medicines, improvements in the hospital environment and to promote health and well-being throughout Wales.
	We have a vision for the health service and health care in Wales, which trust the doctors and the nursesit is they, not politicians, who should be in the driving seat so that they can decide what is best for patients. Let us contrast that vision with eight years of Labour reality. Waiting lists are higher than when the Assembly was created, trusts are facing cumulative debts of more than 100 million, fewer than half of the adult population is registered with a dentist, and the health service is taking on administrative staff at a faster rate that it employs doctors and nurses.
	Even Labour's first initiative, which was to create 22 health boards out of the five existing health authorities, is disastrous. That alone cost the Welsh taxpayer 15 million and has resulted in a duplication of effort and a huge increase in bureaucracy that has since curtailed any chance of increased efficiency and productivity in the service. So bad has Labour stewardship been that even the British Medical Association in Wales passed in 2005 a vote of no confidence in the Labour Welsh Assembly Government, following their mishandling of GP contracts. Our health service is certainly not safe in their hands.
	I agree with the Secretary of State that climate change is probably the biggest challenge facing us today in Wales or beyond our borders. It was good to hear that the right hon. Gentleman takes it seriously. He obviously takes it more seriously than the First Minister, who thinks that climate change is a subject of amusement, warranting flippant remarks about the weather. To me and my colleagues, it is a subject of great concernnot least following the publication of the key environmental statistics that I mentioned earlier, which show that emissions are higher in 2004 than they were in 1990. The right hon. Gentleman and I share the same aim on this and he will be pleased to know that Welsh Conservatives have been developing plans to reflect the need to develop and exploit renewable technology by exploring the viability of tidal power, biofuels and hydropower.

Peter Hain: I am glad to hear that, but then why did the Leader of the Opposition denounce the Gwynt y Mr wind farm projectthe biggest in Wales by a long wayas a giant bird blender?

Don Touhig: I am glad about the hon. Lady's support for Airbus. Will she also confirm her support for Burberry workers? The campaign to sustain their jobs is being led by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). If she does, she might have a word with two of her colleagues who serve on the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs, the hon. Members for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) and for Clwyd, West (Mr. Jones), who appeared in the Committee this week to support Burberry in exporting Welsh jobs.

Cheryl Gillan: No, I want to continue.
	We need an improving economy in Wales. No matter what the Secretary of State says, he cannot escape the fact that 10 years of Labour government have left Wales the poorest part of the United Kingdom. That is one point that is curiously missing from the long list of so-called Labour achievements that he read out. Under Labour, the Welsh economy has suffered. For many, the very purpose and benefit of devolution was to enable more suitable policies to be developed for Wales, with the key aim of bridging the wealth gap between Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom. Since 1999, there has been a range of Government-led activities, but it remains the case that Wales is officially the poorest part of the United Kingdom, and a quarter of Welsh children live in households at or below the poverty threshold.
	Labour wants to make its record a key part of the Assembly election campaign, but its efforts have largely failed. Official figures now show a widening wealth gap between the richest and poorest parts of Wales. Despite hundreds of millions of pounds of EU aid being spent in west Wales and the valleys since 1999, the region is now even further behind east Wales in terms of average wealth. West Wales and the valleys are now poorer than when the Conservative party left office in 1997.  [ Interruption. ] Yes, unemployment rates have fallen since 1997, not least due to the increase in public sector employment, but inactivity rates are among the highest in the United Kingdom, and we see a rising trend of inactivity rates among men, while more and more women are going out to work to keep the bodies and souls of their families together.
	We will need some radical thinking to help the Welsh economy to thrive again, whether it is re-examining business taxes, incentivising entrepreneurs, improving our transport system or boosting our research and development and science base, Welsh Conservatives will be putting in that effort to raise our economic prospects. We have clearly worked enthusiastically with other parties, despite the Labour party's efforts to claim sole credit, to support the St. Athan bid, which will bring some of these badly needed jobs to Wales. We will also work enthusiastically against them, however, if we feel that they are damaging and demoralising the work force, such as the Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs workers whom I met in Pembrokeshire the other day. The callousness of a Government who claim the credit for job creation in one part of Wales in advance of the elections, and then leaves a decision over the future of the Revenue and Customs workers until after the Assembly elections, deserves contempt. It is no wonder that politicians get a bad name.
	It is also no wonder that politicians get a bad name when we see one of the most important tasks that Government should execute carried out so poorly that our safety is no longer assured. I refer, of course, to the policing of our country and borders. I am second to none in my admiration of our four police forces in Wales. They carry out a difficult and dangerous job and deserve the support of the Government and the populations that they serve. They also deserve some common sense and responsibility. It is not responsible to make police forces waste time, effort and money on pursuing administrative changes that are then abandoned with a subsequent loss of time and money to those forces. It is not responsible, and it defies common sense, to preside over a system whereby the police arrest suspected illegal immigrants only to find that they are instructed to release them back into the community before processing.
	Despite countless promises to review, reform and redress its failings, the Home Office remains clearly unfit for purpose. There is absolutely no point in the Minister trying to blame that on us, as the responsibility rests fairly and squarely on his Government's incompetent shoulders. I hope that when he makes his winding-up speech, he will address the issue and tell us what his Government have done to ensure that such a security lapse never happens again, either in Wales or elsewhere.
	Over the past year, I have listened to the Secretary of State and his colleagues imply that there can be no valid criticism of Labour's record, because under Labour, there has been record investment. There may well have been record expenditure, but there has not been record performance. We all know that any fool can spend money. There may be new school buildings, but thousands of schoolchildren are leaving school without the basic skills to have a fulfilling future. We read today in  The Western Mail, an excellent paper, headlines saying that a quarter of Welsh adults have literacy skills below those of an 11-year-old and that our school buildings in Wales are still falling down. There may be more spending on health care, but waiting lists are still higher than when Labour came to power. I repeat: less than half of all adults are registered with an NHS dentist. Too often, people in Wales have been denied access to modern medicines. There may be more grants coming in from Europe, but 3,500 jobs have been lost since April last year and there is still deprivation and social exclusion across the country.
	Record expenditure also comes at a price. The average family in the UK is paying 9,000 more in tax than when Labour came to office. Every homeowner in Wales knows about the cost of revaluation, and today we learn that the enormous increases in council tax in Wales is now likely to push the average bill above 1,000 for the first time. Let us remember all the money that Labour has taken out of people's pockets; it has helped itself to the money from the windfall tax, the sale of gold, the third generation mobile phone licences and the pension fundsbillions of pounds that have been spent, and still Wales is the poorest part of the United Kingdom.
	For decades Labour claimed that Wales would be better under its management than under the Conservatives, and that is now patently one of the great political deceptions of out times. As Patrick McGuinness, a former Labour candidate, wrote, Labour is the party that
	has presided over the increase of inequality between the rich and the poor, often in the very constituencies of those who most vociferously complain about the supposed 'crachach'.
	He adds that it has run a health service that is
	a blight on the devolution project.
	I could not have put it better myself.
	The Conservatives now have a new spring in their step. We offer a new, fresh and appealing agenda. The prospectus that will be laid out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) together with me and the leader of our Welsh Conservatives, Nicholas Bourne, will offer hopemuch-needed hope that there can be a better future in Wales. We are working for a better future for everyone. As Chris Chapman, who at 19 is our youngest community councillor, in Rogerstone, put it:
	The more I read, the more I was drawn to the...Conservative partyfreedom of enterprise, freedom of choice, and freedom of opportunity for all members of society, regardless of their background.
	That is the Conservative messageone of which I think that St. David would have approved.
	When 3 May arrives, we will be asking electors in Wales to look at Labour's record and wake up to the fact that after 10 years it has not fulfilled its promises. I urge them, for the sake of our future, to vote Welsh Conservative for a changea much-needed changein Wales.

Paul Murphy: I will come to that issue in a few moments.
	Obviously, when we talk to people in Wales about the policing of our country, they often, rightly, refer to neighbourhood crime and to antisocial behaviour. We know too that Wales has had a considerable increase in the number of policemen and women on our streets and in the number of community support officers. I understand why it is that, for example, in the AssemblyEdwina Hart, who is the responsible Minister, does a very good job of liaising with the Home Office and in dealing with these mattersthe issues of drugs and antisocial behaviour are so important, but that does not mask the fact that those other threats are there.
	I come to the point that the hon. Gentleman made. My belief is that we should involve and not devolve with regards to security and policing. There is no need to devolve the powers of the Home Secretary. We have a legal system that is the same as in England. It is different from that in Scotland. There is a strong case for improving co-operation between the Welsh Assembly and the Home Office, a point that the hon. Gentleman's party made in the Assembly only a couple of days ago. I agree with that because there is room for improvement; there is no question about that. The Assembly has to deal with many issues that affect the police, whether it is housing, education or drugs, so there is a case for co-operation. The Secretary of State for Wales and the Under-Secretary will perhaps be able to suggest to the Home Secretary that there is a case for setting up a joint working party between the Assembly Government and the Home Office to deal with those important issues.
	I do not know whether the Home Office will be split in the next couple of weeks. There is a case for separating justice from dealing with terrorism. I do not, incidentally, think that there is a case for MI6 going into the Home Office, but that is another issue for another place and another time. That discussion seems to be the most opportune time to discuss the relationship between Wales and the UK in dealing with the important issue of the threat to our security. All people in Wales would agree with that.
	The debate about whether there should be devolution of the police is for another day and not today, and involvement is the right way. The greatest and most important duty of any Government is to protect its citizens from threats, whether external or internal, and Wales has to be part of that.
	I conclude by touching on the points made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State about energy. I agree very much that we must look at tidal energy from the Severn, but we must be careful where wind farms are placed. There is a balance to be made between the environment and the energy that those farms produce. We delude ourselves if we think that we can have an energy future that excludes nuclear power, but again that is for another day.

Lembit �pik: Let me start by wishing the whole House a happy [ Interruption. ] I was going to say Valentine's day. That is in the past. Happy St. David's day; dydd gwyl Dewi dda.
	I very much enjoyed the Secretary of State's speech although unfortunately, as ever, I experienced a dull thud of disappointment when I realised that the Government were not profoundly willing to change anything of great importance; for example, the Barnett formula, which, as has been pointed out, is so out of date even its inventor thinks it needs to be replaced. It is in this context that I offer the Welsh Liberal Democrat vision; I hope it will be an inspiration to us all as we look forward to a healthier Wales in economic and environmental terms and in terms of communities.
	Let us start with healthy communities. There is no better international example of what this means than the Fairtrade movement. Fair trade fortnight began on Monday and we all salute the Fairtrade Foundation's work. The universally recognisable Fairtrade marque helps consumers support people in developing countries to get a fair deal from trade. Although the Fairtrade movement does not apply to UK produce, the concept enshrines the absolute importance of valuing our food producers and sustainable healthy communities. That principle necessarily applies to Wales.
	Wales has a proud history of food and drink production and this week I am glad to say that the Commons Refreshment Department is promoting Welsh food and drink in the Commons dining rooms, cafeterias and bars, so that MPs, peers and visitors to Parliament can celebrate St. David's day in style. We welcome the initiative, none more so than my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams). The Strangers bar, as some hon. Members will know, is stocking Golden Valley ale from the Breconshire brewery. I applaud the efforts of my hon. Friend. I think I can say that no one in Parliament has done more to promote sales of this beer than he. I salute the sober way in which he has repeatedly stepped forward to the bar to support his local brewery. He has been an example to us all.
	While we should highlight our food and drink industry and our tourism strategy and make that one of the key selling points, my concern is that the Britain and London visitor centre no longer has staff dedicated to advising on visits to Wales since the Assembly Government took control of the Welsh Tourism Board. Will the Under-Secretary explain why that is the case when he winds up? How can we make sure that we do not lose out, having lost that staff support at a very important centre?
	More seriously still, the increasing currency that Welsh food and drink enjoys is not reflected by increased currency to our farmers. In real terms, farmers receive 20 per cent. less for milk than they did in 1988, 19 years ago. One thousand dairy farmers in England and Wales have gone out of business in the last year alone. DEFRA figures show that farmers are getting 34 per cent. less for beef and 30 per cent. less for lamb than they did 19 years ago.

Lembit �pik: My hon. Friend is right. The price farmers receive for their milk can be as low as 16p or 17p per litre. That is more than 4p less than the cost of producing it, yet it is sold in supermarkets for about 55p or 57p per litre.
	Meat imports have risen 57 per cent. since 1997. Why? How can the Government allow such exploitation to continue? In government, Welsh Liberal Democrats would take steps to ensure that farmers are not ripped off at the farm gate for the sake of profit at the supermarket checkout. Again, I challenge the Minister to say in his winding-up speech what the Labour party intend to do to try to address the outrageous disparities that exist between the power of supermarkets and that of farmers.

Lembit �pik: The hon. Lady makes a good point, and I hope that farmers will get actively involved in that consultation process. However, I should add that on many occasions farmers have constructively engaged in Government consultations but have been rewarded with no improvement in the proposals being debated. I also lament the continuous apparent efforts of the Government to weaken the milk suppliers' power in the marketplace, stretching all the way back to the destruction of the Milk Marketing Board.
	I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about the hon. Lady's sensible suggestion and the concerns that I have raised, not least because they affect associated industries as well. Hence the announcement of the likely closure of the Aeron valley creamery in Ceredigion, with the potential loss of 44 jobs. My hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mark Williams) planned to attend today's debate, but he has had to travel to that creamery to consider the crisis with management and the very concerned work force. The staff have worked hard to establish well known brands, and the decision that has been made was a bolt from the blue. Our priority must be to protect that factory and similar factories as going concerns, and to establish why yet another firm in the dairy sector has pulled its operations only two years after setting up.
	Sadly, despite all their fine words, the Government have done little to support farming. They cut Tir Mynydd payments to hill farmers and ignored the threat posed by new European Union rules on electronic identity for sheep farmers. They also refused to give farmers more bargaining power against the supermarkets. Instead of strengthening the relatively toothless code of practice they have let the balance of power lie with the massive supermarket chains, and instead of introducing a food trade inspector with strong investigative powers they have just sat on their hands.
	My colleague, Mick Bates, the Assembly Member for Montgomeryshire, has called for a fair trade Welsh milk co-operative so that farmers can get a fair return for their product. Happily, I hear that there has been some movement on that. It seems that Waitrose is prepared to introduce some form of transparent labelling system that shows the profits of the producer, the processor and the retailer. Does the Wales Office back that scheme, and will it encourage others to follow suit? I very much back the scheme, and Liberal Democrats feel that Waitrose is showing that major outlets have nothing to fear from working more in partnership with the suppliers, on whom they depend for the produce that makes them their profits.
	It appears that similar kinds of pressures are applying in respect of the Wales post office network. In many isolated settlements post offices are the social hub, yet Government Departments and agencies have this year cut contracts with post offices, draining support from the network. In the Assembly, Labour failed to back Liberal Democrat proposals to reinstate the post office development fund, which helped to keep more than 100 post offices open between 2002 and 2004.
	The Government consultation on closing 2,500 post offices ends next Wednesday. On 6 February, we gave the Minister notice that individual sub-postmasters had not been sent a copy of the consultation document. That might explain why only 15 responses have so far been received from Wales. Why did the Wales Office not make sure that the document was circulated by the Department of Trade and Industry? Is the Wales Office willing to provide more time for reasonable consultation opportunities with the sub-postmasters, who would be happy to make a contribution, and who would have done so if only they had known that they were expected to do so?

Lembit �pik: On that point, I thank the Minister for the time that the he took to meet us and the sub-postmasters, who felt, as do we, that it was a constructive meeting. I hope that he will take on board the proposals arising from the consultation exercise that my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire mentions. In essence, such proposals can be summarised as creating a one-stop shop where people can buy their TV licence, renew their car tax and pay council tax and other bills. We also encourage the Minister to think creatively about bringing in new business to rural areas. Could post offices be used to process livestock movement forms, for example? Can a concerted effort be made to encourage Welsh councils to use post offices for council tax and rent payments, and perhaps even for the payment of parking fines?
	The trend to move local services away from rural and sparsely populated areas is tragically reflected in the threatened closure of local tax offices in regions and constituencies such as mid-Wales, Montgomeryshire and Ceredigion. Do the Government not know that, far from being under-employed, these offices help to deal with the backlog from centralised offices such as that in Wrexham? In fact, they are totally overloaded. I seek an assurance from the Minister that the Wales Office will listen to the case for maintaining those local offices and help us to get the Treasury to think again, not least because the possible reduction in the tax collected could exceed the superficial saving made through such closures. Given that all those offices are fully employed, it is fairly difficult to see how any saving in staff numbers can be made. I hope that the Minister will comment on that issue.
	Another sign of a healthy community is how it tackles crime. Welsh prisons were effectively full in 2000; now, they are roughly 140 per cent. above their original design capacity. Over that period, staff to prisoner ratios have fallen, while violence in Welsh prisons has, unsurprisingly, more than doubled. This prison crisis was not unexpectedall the warning signs were there long before the media started covering the issue. In the last four years alone, there have been 900 incidents of prisoner-on-prisoner violence at Parc prison, in Cardiff. Under such circumstances it is extremely difficult to rehabilitate prisoners, and efforts are hampered by the stress caused within the culture of the prison itself. In fact, that might partly explain why reoffending rates have risen from 57 per cent. in 1992 to 67 per cent. today.

Lembit �pik: In part, I agree with the hon. Gentleman, but the underlying problem is that we are not dealing with the fundamental causes of crime. The Welsh Lib Dems believe that a healthy community in Wales is one in which those convicted of criminal offences are educated out of crime, helped to move away from drug and alcohol addiction and given the tools to access jobs, thereby reducing the likelihood that they will reoffend. The current problem is that almost the opposite seems to be happening, owing to overcrowding. Adding to the problem is the fact that many convicts and young offenders are more than 100 miles from their natural support networks. They can be based as far away as Suffolk or Newcastle. Such distances necessarily damage the chances of rehabilitating the very individuals on whom we should be working hard to move them away from crime.
	The Welsh Liberal Democrats are also delighted to give credit where it is due, and restorative justice programmes and one-to-one mentoring schemes are part of the solution. Given the response by the Under-Secretary to the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) recently, the Government appear to be interested in considering such schemes, which have had a significant success rate in moving people off drug addictions and finding them new jobs after their sentences. While prisons can be a school for crime, we have to find other ways to restore the chances for individuals and remove them from the crime cycle.
	Five years ago, north Wales was the safest area in Wales in terms of gun crime, and one of the safest in the UK. Since then, gun crime in north Wales has risen 14-fold, making it the area of Wales most at risk from gun crime, which is now more common in the area than in areas such as Newcastle, Bristol and Hull. I asked the Minister if he is aware of the White Gold project pioneered in north Cornwall. It is a partnership between the police, youth offending teams and community workers. It has worked quite well and has a track record of reducing crime by as much as 56 per cent., a saving to the Home Office of 500,000. We feel that this model, using a dedicated police unit in partnership with youth offending teams, which could work closely with youth officers in each safer neighbourhood team, could make the difference between those young people reoffending or having a chance to get back on track.

Lembit �pik: My hon. Friend has worked tirelessly in that campaign, and she makes a good, cross-party point. I hope that the Minister will confirm that he will work with her, and with his colleagues in the Welsh Assembly and the Department of Health, to ensure that that preventable and tragic problem is dealt with in the most effective way.
	To illustrate my remarks about local hospitals in Wales, I shall give an example from my constituency. There is no justification on earth for the closure of Llanidloes hospital, as that will cost lives, not save money. I had a serious accident in 1998, and the hospital saved my life. Many people would not be alive today without the fast, professional and efficient service that staff there have displayed down the years.
	Closing Llanidloes hospital will merely shift patients further afield, and shunt costs to other budget headings. No one on the local health board has yet been able to explain where the cost savings will come from, and that is because they do not exist. Local health boards were supposed to provide local accountability; that was the whole point, but if they are not responsible to local demand, they cannot do their job and be responsive to local need. In the Liberal Democrat picture, local health provision is vital, and I hope that Welsh Office Ministers will use whatever powers they have to work with their opposite numbers in Cardiff to make sure that the tragic closure of essential services is prevented.
	That brings me to the third and final element of what we regard as the Welsh health check lista healthy environment and a sustainable economy. I am very encouraged that the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham and the Secretary of State both said that they are genuinely and seriously committed to the environment.
	Two key reports in the past six months, the Stern report and the first part of the fourth assessment report from the intergovernmental panel on climate change, have made the case for environmental action more compelling and urgent then ever before. Three certainties arise from those groundbreaking pieces of workfirst, that climate change and the environment are, and will remain, of primary concern to humankind for the foreseeable future: secondly, that without concerted action now our lifestyles will have catastrophic knock-on effects on our environment, economies and descendants; and thirdly that, with the right kind of policies, protecting our environment and combating climate do not have to come at the expense of our economies.
	On the contrary, combating climate change is an economic opportunity, not an economic risk. The lesson is that, by pursuing a sustainable and healthy economy, we can also preserve a sustainable and healthy environment.

David Davies: Has the hon. Gentleman seen reports that flying is one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gases? What should hon. Members do to try and decrease the amount of time that they spend in aeroplanes?

Lembit �pik: The hon. Gentleman is slightly off beam, as usual. I assume that what he says today will be directly contradicted by Nick Bourne tomorrow.  [ Interruption. ] He needs to settle down. I will answer his question, but he must stop talking, as otherwise he will not be able to hear me.
	The aviation industry as a whole generates 3 per cent. of world pollution. The hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) will know that I fly aircraft. I very much enjoy it, and believe that that puts me in a strong position to say what I think should happen. I believe that aviation should pay its environmental way, and that the Government should work on an international basis to secure an environmental offset on the fuel used in commercial jets. No such offset exists at present.
	My opinion may surprise those hon. Members who know that I am actively involved in the aviation world, but such involvement can be no excuse for environmental irresponsibility. The Government should take the opportunity to be proactive and secure international agreements at a European level to ensure that aviation pays its environmental way. I hope that that answers the question from the hon. Member for Monmouth.
	Wales is peering through a window of opportunity, as it is blessed with many different renewable energy resources, a wealth of environmental expertise and a solid platform of green industries. However, if we do not change direction we will miss out and blow a golden chance to become the green capital of the UK. That would be a terrible wasted opportunity. It is made worse by pressure from Scotland, which has been running a green jobs strategy since June 2005.
	Wales' efforts to generate clean energy are being damaged by our lack of ambitious targets. While the Scottish Executive, no doubt because of the constructive contribution of the coalition Liberal Democrat partners in government, have committed themselves to obtaining 100 per cent. of their electricity from renewable sources by 2015. The Welsh Assembly has still not identified what taking a Welsh share of the UK's Kyoto commitment means. Nor has it developed a coherent climate change programme. Meanwhile, by contrast, Scotland's strategy is well under way, and it is likely to meet its Scottish share of its Kyoto commitment.
	I do not want to see Wales fall behind on the green agenda. I want to see Wales become the greenest country in Europe. To make it so, we must employ the full range of measures at our disposal. Does the Welsh Office have any sympathy with some of the Minister's Welsh Assembly colleagues who would like to see Wales given power over planning for power stations above 50 MW? We feel that that power is essential if Wales is to unleash its potential to generate clean electricity from renewable sources. Does the Under-Secretary have any sympathy with those in Wales who want power over building regulations also devolved to the Assembly so that Wales can drive forward cutting-edge, energy-efficient building design? We have already heard some promising news about that.
	One Government measure that has been mentioned in previous debates, and which I wholeheartedly support, is the forthcoming Energy Technology Institute. The 1 billion of investment that has been pledged from private and public sources could have significant benefits for Wales and, in turn, could have positive results for the overall objective of developing new cutting-edge green technologies. We already have a wealth of experience in the research and development sector of green technologies and techniques. The Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth is one such unique organisation, and it is carrying out pioneering work. I am sure that the Minister will join me in congratulating the CAT on its invaluable contributions.
	The same goes for the ground-breaking work of the Institute of Grassland and Environmental ResearchIGERon the sustainable development of biomass crops, which were mentioned earlier. It estimates that up to one tenth of Welsh arable land could be used to grow energy crops as one way of converting from conventional agriculture to energy-related agriculture.
	Wales is also home to a wide range of green industries. Entrepreneurs such as Dulas in Montgomeryshire have developed domestic and portable microgeneration units and devices. Intersolar in Bridgend has developed solar energy roof tiles and G24i in Cardiff has developed a highly adaptable solar foil. I hope that Ministers will work to ensure that every effort is made to inform the DTI of the full contribution that Wales could make to the new ETI. I ask the Minister to confirm that he will urge his colleague to attend a showcase event taking place at the CAT later this year, showcasing Welsh green industries, research bodies and non-governmental organisations that could be in line for receiving funds under the ETI and other DTI programmes.
	I was also interested to hear of the recent High Court ruling on the Government's conduct during their energy review. Certainly, the consensus among Welsh stakeholders was in line with the judge's ruling that the Government had not been open and transparent in their information on nuclear power during the process. We need to restore confidence in the energy review process among Welsh stakeholders in order to avoid the mistakes of the past. I do not like nuclear power, but we cannot afford a failed consultation process that makes it look as if the Government have already made up their minds, as apparently the Prime Minister has, without really listening to what the public want. Nothing can be more pointless than a pretend consultation and a predetermined outcome.
	I am disappointed that the Government have decided to delay the introduction of the climate change Bill. Taking action on climate change is something that we all talk about as a matter of urgency. Wales would undoubtedly benefit. What discussions has the Minister had about a timetable for the introduction of that Bill?
	Mention of the Severn estuary has already been made. It can provide all of Wales' energy and one 20th of the UK's energy. I simply underline the need not to discount the tidal lagoon technology, which may or may not be better than the Severn barrage. I strongly urge Ministers to have a second look at it. Such technologies could have a fruitful future. It is argued that tidal lagoons could have less environmental impact than a barrage, so I ask only that we have a sensible debate rather than assuming that a barrage would be better than lagoons.
	The House is expecting a White Paper on the marine Bill and I hope that the Wales Office has worked with colleagues at the Department of Trade and Industry on the potential for Wales to maximise cost-effective electricity generation off the coast of Wales from all forms of renewable marine technology. As a nation, we must discuss the level of coastal protection that Wales can expect in the foreseeable future, in light of rising sea levels and an increased number of storms. We should seize the chance to combine coastal protection measures and renewable marine technologies in a forward-thinking, cost-effective, joined-up strategy to protect the Welsh coast and generate clean energy. My concern is that although the Government talk warmly about environmental strategies they do not always join them up, so we end up with missed opportunities, or half-finished projects, which conflict with one another for funding.
	In conclusion, the Welsh Liberal Democrats aim to deliver a holistic healthy Wales, with healthy communities, healthy people and a healthy and environmentally sustainable economy. We are committed to a healthy Wales because we know that it is possible, so if that is what Wales wants it is exactly what Wales will get by voting for the Liberal Democrats in May. We started on that programme when we were in government, and I hope we proved that we were effective in helping to serve Wales in a way that genuinely added value to the quality of life of our Welsh citizens; so if that is what the Welsh people want, I hope that in May they will vote for the Liberal Democrats, who promise to deliver it.

Stephen Crabb: It is still standing proud. The preferred symbol was, for many years, the leek. The 6th-century Welsh poet, Taliesin, was a great fan of the leek, believing that, if eaten, it encouraged good health and happiness. Whatever the origins of all the quirky practices of St. David's day, such as the wearing of leeks or daffodils, they are part of the fabric of our heritage. They are the things that help to bind us together as a nation.
	Some hon. Members present will be familiar with my views on St. David's day. I think that it is a special and unique day in the school calendar in Wales. I have respect for Members of all parties who believe that St. David's day should be a public holiday, but I believe that it is at its best when celebrated in schools. Next week, the  Western Telegraph Pembrokeshire and the  Milford and West Wales Mercury in my local area will be full of beautiful photographs of little Welsh girls wearing national costume, and lads wearing Welsh rugby shirts, daffodils or leeks. The schools are where St. David's day is celebrated best. I make a plea to Front Benchers on both sides of the House to resist calls for St. David's day to be a public holiday. It should remain a special day for Welsh schools.

Stephen Crabb: On Tuesday, the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs held an inquiry into the closure of the Treorchy plant. It involved robust questioning of the management of Burberry and of representatives of the GMB. I do not recall seeing the right hon. Gentleman there, but a lot of people who were present will have made up their minds about the quality of evidence presented by the GMB and the Burberry management.
	I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Aberavon (Dr. Francis), who originally suggested holding an inquiry on globalisation and its impact on Wales. It was a timely recommendation, given the Burberry situation and Tata's takeover of Corus, and the Committee is finding the inquiry worthwhile. I applaud the campaigning skills of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who, along with others, has helped to generate a very effective publicity campaign on behalf of Burberry workers. However, it is not simply a question of whether one is against the workers at the Burberry factory and pro-management, or against the management. It is much more complex, as it goes to the heart of the challenges of globalisation and the way in which they impact on Wales.
	I was interested to read in the press comments by various celebrities involved in the campaign. I do not question the sincerity of their remarks about Burberry, but if they genuinely wish to contribute to the debate about globalisation and the challenges facing Welsh manufacturers, as well as making critical comments about Burberry management they should ask difficult questions about what is happening to our skills base, the quality of science education in this country and a range of difficult issues. The battle of globalisation will be won or lost on whether the country can innovate and whether our education and skills base is of sufficient quality.
	The article in  The Western Mail this morning said:
	More than half of the adults in Wales have poor numeracy skills and one in four has a reading and writing age of 11 or below.
	Education and skills standards in Wales remain some of the worst in the UK, and the gap between English and Welsh standards is widening, which is a national scandal. The number of young people not in full-time education, employment or training is higher in Wales than it was in 1997. Those youngsters have fallen through the net of employment and training. The Prince's Trust in Wales says that 100,000 young people in Wales are simply doing nothing. Across the UK, about 1.25 million 15 to 24-year-olds are not in education, employment or training, which is a national scandal. Exclusions, unauthorised absences and truancy in Welsh schools have all risen in recent years, and that is part of the challenge that we must address if we are to succeed in facing up to the issue of globalisation and the extent to which the Welsh and British economies can continue to prosper and succeed in a globalised world.
	Burdens on UK businesses are relevant, too. The cumulative burden of new regulation on Welsh firms since 1998 comes to 2.2 billion, which is an enormous sum for a small economy such as Wales. That figure is based on the Government's own regulatory impact assessment.
	Economic success is not constant. It requires continuous improvement, and when you look at the weak UK productivity it is clear that we cannot allow the regulatory burden to continue on this upward curve. Small to medium enterprises employ more than half of the UK's private sector work force. If we want to realise the vision of a UK economy which is competitive, ensuring wealth and opportunities, these businesses need to be supported, rather than stunted by overly prescriptive and burdensome regulation.
	Those are not my words, but the words of the director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce. Many small companies in Wales, which are the job creators of the Welsh economy, face huge burdens.
	It is important that we face up to the challenges of globalisation. It is not just about maintaining our quality of life but about ensuring that we maintain high-quality public services. We have discussed the challenge of climate change, which is one of the key challenges of our time. A key domestic challenge concerns our ability to maintain high-quality public services. In peripheral rural areas of Wales such as Pembrokeshire, critical public services have been eroded, which may be a pointer to the way in which things will develop across the board. Under Labourthe party that claims to be the founder of the NHSNHS dentistry in Wales has been allowed to wither and, in some parts of the country, services have been decimated.

Nia Griffith: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that only a couple of weeks ago Mill Lane dental surgery in Llanelli had its official opening? That brand-new, state-of-the-art dental surgery offers the services of five NHS dentists to a town that encompasses 12,000 residents.

Paul Flynn: I would love to argue more about this, but there is a shortage of time.
	I shall mention three other young people in my constituency, whom I remember had some distinctionRichard Whittaker, Adam Brustad and James Sadler, who will be performing in the Meze Lounge tonight a newly written song called Land of my Mothers, which is part of the political agenda. There is even a song called, Lebanon is Burning and another one about Animal Farm. Those are three splendid idealistic young men, marvellous examples of their generation, who believe in things other than what this gentleman I have quoted believes indrugs, theft, wreck-ups, smart suits and making money. There is an optimistic side, and if people want an exemplar of what young people can achieve, they would be better off in the Meze Lounge in Newport tonight, listening to the first performance of Land of my Mothers.
	There are just two points that I would like to contribute to the debate. The first is about pensions in Wales, one of my long-standing interests. The Pensions Bill is currently before Parliament, and I want to congratulate the new Labour Government on introducing the classic Labour policy of linking pensions with earnings. Sadly, that will not happen until 2012.
	Yesterday I received an astonishing answer from the Government about the state of the national insurance fund, which has to have a contingency fund within it. It is set at 16.7 per cent. The money in the fund as a balanceabove what is requiredis 62.3 per cent.nearly four times what the contingency should be. The contingency has never been used in recent years. If unemployment doubled, for example, it would be necessary to use it. Thus we already have in the national insurance fund 38 billion, accounting for the 62.3 per cent. figure that I mentioned.
	The question I asked yesterday was what the balance would be in 2012. The answer was the astonishing figure of 74 billion. We have to think about an amount like 74 billionway over what is required for a contingency. Thus the link between pensions and earnings could be restored tomorrow. The great Bill going through Parliament will restore that link eventually and will greatly benefit women, reducing the period of entitlement for pensions from 39 years to 30 years. However, the answer I received is based on that happening. It is happening soon, so why wait until 2012?
	I urge the Government to reconsider the measure, because pensioners want the restoration of that link. In our 10 years in government, I believe that we have had an honourable record. Although the link was not restored, which was a great shame, the other changes madethe pension credit, winter fuel allowance and other allowanceshave made up for that. The amount that has been given to pensioners in that time is equivalent to what would have been given if we had restored the link in 1997. The pensioners who need the link restored and the extra money are the ones who were robbed almost every year from 1980 by the previous Government, who made a yearly salami cut in pensions increases by increasing pensions according to prices, not earnings.
	I hope that the Government will reconsider that issue in the Pensions Bill. When the Public Administration Committee talked to the civil service colleges about the changes in social security legislation that have taken place in the past 20 years, the point was made that in the 1980s and early 1990s, such legislation was made by putting a finger in the air, finding which way the wind was blowing and doing what was politically correct. After an examination of the evidence, the basis of the Turner report and so on, the Pensions Bill is introducing a policy that I believe should command all sections of the House in the same way as Barbara Castle's policy did in 1975. There is a chance of working together, but I believe that the amount in the account is now at such a level that we can look for a speedy restoration of the link and not wait until 2012.
	On civil service jobs, I am speaking from a position of success in Newport. I recall a story told to me by an American business man who had settled in Wales and received a visit from a journalist from the west coast of America who was looking to write an article about footloose industry and see whether Wales was suitable place to relocate. She told the business man that she had three questions about Wales as a place for new industry. The questions were along these lines: Are there problems with the pollution from the coal mines and steelworks?, Is it true that if somebody does not speak Welsh, their neighbours are likely to burn down their house? and Is it true that social life is poor because the pubs and cinemas are shut on Sundays? My American friend said, Goodness me, is this what they think about Wales on the west coast of America? The journalist said, No; this is what they told me about Wales when I asked them in London yesterday.
	I believe that one of the greatest obstacles that we have to getting jobs into Wales is the perception not on the other side of the world, but in England. When there was a vote to get the Patent Office into Newport, the choice was between there and Norwich; I would be embarrassed to say how few people chose Newport. That relocation is now the example quoted in the Lyons review as a great success. People came in great numbers, and although they had to be dragged kicking and screaming, they settled happily and liked the area and surroundings, and felt that the whole ethos of life was superior. Those people have stayed since and are now living out their retirement years there, so the project was a huge success. New skills have been learned in the city. Where people were stevedores, coal trimmers, puddlers and sample passers, their grandchildren are now the statisticians and patent examiners. A great transformation has taken place.
	We have built up this huge centre of excellence in relocated civil service jobs. It would be ironic if there were now a move out of the city and we lost jobs in Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, because it now has 4,000 civil servants and is becoming a mini-Whitehall; those civil service jobs have replaced the jobs that were lost, and it is right that they should be there.
	I believe that there is a strong case to be made against the idea of centralising the organisation, perhaps in three sections in Wales. It is currently spread throughout Wales, and I have great sympathy with what the last speaker said about that. We need more than just small face-to-face areas where people can see civil servants. As we heard, HMRC receives a high level of complaints through its call centres. People like to have a face-to-face interview. There are other factors. In Newport we have a very high number of immigrants and other people whose first languages are neither English nor Welsh. That creates difficulties, although there is a section dealing with employers that has a specialist network.
	There is a strong argument for keeping these centres going. I understand the pressures that have arisen. Now that the two sectionsInland Revenue and Customshave come together, they have a certain amount of excess space. There is a powerful case for saying that they must not waste that space and must put it to proper use. I make a plea for maintaining those sections in Pontypool and Newport and letting them grow so that we can build up a public service ethos that was not there to such an extent before, but is now part of the prosperous future for all of Wales.

Adam Price: Young offender institutions are part of the Prison Service; they are part of the prison estate. That is well recognised. Of course, we have split sites in many cases as well. I argue that there are other more appropriate interventions and that we should be looking at a wider range of residential settings: both secure closed settings and open settings. Prescoed was one such open setting. Because of the problem of overcrowding, that was turned into an open adult site, with all the attendant problems. I would have imagined that the hon. Gentleman had some sympathy in those circumstances.
	I turn to the issue of substance misuse. As we know, most crime is drug or alcohol-related. We need to improve and extend the detoxification and rehabilitation facilities and services available for substance misusers. We also need to start to treat misusers not just as criminals but as patients suffering a chronic and debilitating sickness known as addiction. If they break the law to fund a habit, a properly funded and publicly owned probation service should work with other agencies to implement a personal plan to avoid offending, including, where appropriate, the use of medication. In my view, that should include as a treatment option the prescription of diamorphine, or injectable pharmaceutical heroin, in standard doses for long-term addicts. A pilot is under way in three areas of EnglandLondon, the north-east and Brightonand I understand that the preliminary results are encouraging. Clearly, we need to evaluate the pilot carefully, but if the results are positive we need to look at adding this as a treatment option for long-term heroin addicts.
	There have been extensive and large-scale studies in other countriesCanada, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Switzerlandso there is a body of research for us to draw upon. The German study showed, interestingly, that those prescribed diamorphine fared better in terms of their physical and mental health, and that an average of 8,500 was saved in terms of reduced crime. Two thirds of property crime is heroin-related, which is why the Home Office has decided to look at the pilot in this way.
	Medicalising the issue with heroin addictionother drugs have to be dealt with differentlyhas another benefit; it changes the perception of the drug among young people. Instead of its being seen as something illegal and in some way therefore exciting, it would be seen as a loser's drug, or as a medical problem that had to be dealt with. In Zurich, where they have had a 10-year pilot study of the medical prescription of heroin, there has been an 82 per cent. drop in new users, precisely for this reason.
	It is important that we stress that this should not be a free-for-all, nor is it legalisation; that is an entirely different debate. It should only be for people with long-term heroin dependencya last resort for those who have tried and failed with all other forms of treatment, including oral methadone. It should be done only under very strict and stringent medical conditions in close collaboration with the police.
	As the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik) said, this is not a new policy in the UK; it was known as the British model, and was the basic practice in dealing with heroin addicts from 1926 until 1968. Any GP still has the legal power to prescribe diamorphine or heroin to treat medical conditions, but must have a special licence to treat addicts with injectable heroin. There are currently three doctors in Wales who prescribe injectable heroin to addicts, so it is not an entirely new thing.
	The question is whether we have a systematic policy of looking at this matter, because the guidelines are unclear. To be fair, the Government, in their updated drugs strategy in 2002, promised to widen access to prescribed diamorphine for all those with a clinical need, and in May 2003 the national treatment agency for substance misuse said that prescription may be beneficial for some heroin misusers and gave a guarded endorsement of the practice.
	I think we lack a clear statement of policy that would give a lead to GPs, who may be receiving mixed messages at the moment about how this fits in with overall policy. If the evidence from the pilot is as encouraging as we understand, we could go forward and take a huge step towards breaking the power of heroin dealers and pushers on our streets. We could deprive organised crime of a core client base and make heroin trafficking unprofitable for the first time. We could free a new generation, and generations in the future, from addiction.
	I hope that we can build a cross-party consensus. Deprived areas have thousands of heroin addictscoalfield communities have a 27 per cent. higher incidence of heroin addictionand we owe it to those communities, and to the young people of the future as well, to think innovatively, to learn the lessons of the pilots and, if they are positive, to implement a new approach in our communities.

Don Touhig: My hon. Friend is right. It offers Welsh business and industry and the whole economy of south-east Wales and Severn-side a great opportunity to access first-class training facilities.
	If we are truly to build a knowledge-based economy, our universities and colleges must be at the forefront. They have a vital role to play in translating research excellence into commercial innovation. Thanks to Labour's knowledge exploitation fund, Welsh business has been able to take advantage of the excellent research and technology at our Welsh universities. We must encourage Welsh companies to work more closely with universities and colleges so that they can gain access to knowledge and research to improve their competitiveness. Wales will not be able to survive as a low-skill, low-wage economy. We knew that when the Conservative party was in government.
	We should also take into account that party's opposition to the national minimum wage, aided and abetted by the indifference of the Welsh nationalists and the Liberal Democrats, and the fact that when it was in power it presided over the destruction of the finest industrial apprenticeship scheme the world has ever known. That is the record that the Conservative party delivered for the people of Wales, and the people of Wales will remember that on 3 May.

David Davies: I am not aware that the Conservative group in the Welsh Assembly has officially published any proposals for the future of the Assembly. By the way, I shall try to keep my speech short. I like to take interventions, but I should point out to hon. Members that is they who will not be able to speak if they intervene too many times.
	One reason I would not like to see any further powers going to the Welsh Assembly is because it has not proved to be very good at using the powers it already has. For example, it has powers to raise taxation through the back door by capping funding to local government. It has done that by effectively changing the formula around in a way that means that rural areas lose out. Deprivation is calculated based on how many people are on benefits, rather than average incomes, for example. As a result, in Monmouthshire the council tax for a band D house was some 384 in 1997, but that has gone up to almost 1,000 now. The majority of houses have also moved from band D into band E, meaning that people have had an increase since 1997 of some 160 per cent. in their council tax, mainly as a result of the change in formula implemented by the Welsh Assembly.
	The Assembly also has powers in the health service, and we have seen what a disaster that has been. The health service in England is far better run than the health service in Wales

Martin Caton: I am sorry but I shall not give way, because if I take less than the allotted time, everybody else will be able to speak.
	Central to the concerns of my constituents is the provision of public services, with particular concern about the UK Government's apparent attitude towards the future delivery of the services for which they are still responsible in Wales. People in Wales are surprised and alarmed that a Labour Government, again and again, look to the use of the private sector and free market competition to provide what have always been regarded as core public sector service responsibilities. People are conscious, and grateful, that Wales has not experienced the worst of that approach in the health and education sectors, because responsibility for them is devolved and the Welsh Assembly Government are not following the English lead, with trust hospitals and schools and the establishment of winner and loser competitions where patients and children are the potential losers.
	The National Assembly is to be congratulated on taking quite a different approach, which is based on honouring the public service ethos, building on it and developing services around the strong sense of community, mutuality and local ownership that still exists in Wales. That is the right way forward and I hope the Assembly sticks to it. I am sure it will.
	Vital public service functions delivered in Wales are still the responsibility of UK Departments, however, where enthusiasm for moving to a commissioner and contractor structure appears to be strong, even though it is justified by precious little evidence. Like many colleagues, I was contacted by a considerable number of probation workers living in my constituency who cannot understand the rationale for abolishing the national probation service, only to replace it with a competitive market that will take away local accountability in the process. After yesterday's vote on the Offender Management Bill, I fear that there will be a marked reduction in the quality of service, with the real danger of an increase in reoffending.
	Similarly, I have been lobbied by employees at the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency in Swansea who believe that preparations are under way to throw them to the market to reduce costs. Their fear and their belief is that that will be achieved by a diminution in standards if the consultants' investigations recommend wholesale outsourcing, as they suspect. We have already seen what has happened to the Ministry of Defence in Llangennech, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), where some of my constituents work. Jobs are being rationalised away on the most dubious grounds.
	I shall concentrate my brief remarks on what is happening to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs in Wales, to which the hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) and my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn) have already referred. The staff of HMRC are disillusioned and angry about what is being done to their service and are trying to secure change before it is too late.
	The HMRC is of course a fairly new creation, combining the responsibilities of the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise. Even before the merger, both the old departments had undergone considerable reorganisation, but nothing had prepared the civil servants for the announcement on 16 November last year of the department's intention to shed 25,000 jobs across the UK by 2011, closing hundreds of local offices in the process. If that goes ahead, the impact in Wales will be particularly acute, with something like 1,000 jobs at risk. Threatened with closure are the Aberystwyth office, the Haverfordwest office, the Holyhead office, the Llanelli office, the Bridgend office, the Pontypridd office, the Porthmadog office and others. Yet more are proposed for downgrading.
	Understandably, the Public and Commercial Services union, which represents the employees affected, is focusing on the impact that that will have on the lives of their members and their families, and the economic consequences for the communities where offices are planned for closure and where jobs will be removed. However, it also makes a powerful case about the likely impact on the work of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and draws attention to how extremely centralising the proposed new structures would be, if and when introduced.
	One of the specific functions of HMRC is called debt management and bankingthe old collector of taxes rolewhich involves collecting duties from customers who have not paid their taxes on time and which is now going to be centralised in Cardiff. That is an alarming prospect when one learns that there is already a backlog of 1 million unworked and unanswered pieces of correspondence in large processing offices, such as Cardiff, around the country. In fact, processingthings such as the capture of self-assessment tax returns and ensuring that pay-as-you-earn customers have the correct amount of tax deducted from paywill be centralised in Cardiff and Wrexham by 2010. The fear is that that is bound to be bad news for customers throughout Wales.
	At least Cardiff and Wrexham are in Wales, however. VAT registration jobs that are now based in west Wales are going to Grimsby and Wolverhampton. Capital gains tax inquiries, which were once dealt with by teams across Wales, are also now to be dealt with by one team in Cardiff. That approach is reflected in plans for many of the HMRC's functions in Wales. We face the loss of operational intelligence, detection and business services under the departmental plans. The shift is away from the local, towards the centre, and it seems to go against much of recent Government rhetoric.
	The union tells me that there is no senior civil servant with direct managerial control in HMRC in Wales. There is no regional or national forum in HMRC in Wales in which management and trade unions can meet to negotiate and find solutions to problems specific to Wales. There is to be new investment in something called local compliance, where staff will have the job of detecting customers who have not paid the correct tax or have not declared themselves to the authorities, but those jobs are going outside Wales.
	Indeed, in HMRC, local compliance is a misleading description. The local compliance zone for Wales is Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, with the top civil servants based in Scotland. The PCS union estimates that the distances involved in covering this structure result in some 100 plane journeys a month by senior civil servants in local compliance alone. The negative environmental impact and the colossal carbon footprint do not just result from air travel. With the new structures, many middle managers now have staff under them from all over Wales and beyond. They are clocking up tens of thousands of road miles trying to keep in regular touch with their juniors.
	It is right, however, to say that Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs does not exist just to provide jobs for civil servants. Its function is to provide a high-quality service to its customers. Is it fulfilling that function with its new approach and structure? Apparently it is not, if a million pieces of correspondence lying unanswered, and the constituents who contact me to complain about the weeks that they have to wait for responses to important queries, are anything go by. Problem solving will certainly not be helped by removing the link between the customer and her or his local office.
	Looking at the proposals, I have a sense of dj vu. A few years back, before the merger, Customs and Excise decided to remove customs officers from the Welsh ports and to work in future on a basis of risk assessment from centralised England locations. That was a mistake then, and this is a mistake now. Surely it would be far better to think again and set the objective of improving the working of the department on the basis of local services and local management, delivering for local people. That is the direction that we should be heading in and that is the direction that I keep hearing Ministers say they want to head in. Let us make a start with Revenue and Customs and let us get back to properly respecting and valuing our public servants, whether at local, Welsh Assembly or UK Government level.

Hywel Williams: It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gower (Mr. Caton). May I say how much I agreed with almost everything that he said, and how much I profoundly disagreed with so much of what the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) said? Were a stranger to listen to the debateI am sure that there are people who know little about Welsh politicshe or she would find the Secretary of State's earlier claim that my party elected to go into coalition with the Tories frankly incredible, as the two preceding speeches clearly demonstrate.
	We had a debate yesterday outside this place about the purpose of the Welsh day debate. What is it for? Looking at the attendance here today and the number of Members wanting to speak, we see that it is clearly an important forum. I cannot remember in my short time in this place there being a time limit on speeches in such a debate, which is significant. The debate gives hon. Members from Wales the opportunity to talk about detailed issues in their constituencies, and that is certainly one of the things that I intend to do in my few minutes.
	Given that it is St. David's day, I can tell the House that Dewi Sant said:
	Na ddiystyrwch y pethau bychain
	or
	Do not disregard the small things.
	He also said, Cadw'r ffydd or Keep the faith. I intend to do both in my speech, or at least I will try.
	Looking at the purpose of the debate, we see that there is the possibility of scrutiny and review, and of examining something that the Secretary of State has put great emphasis on, which is the partnership between this place and the Assembly. We also have the opportunity to put forward some policies.
	I want to scrutinise and review one of the points that has been raised by a number of hon. Members, including the hon. Members for Gower and for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan)the whole saga of HMRC. I should preface my remarks by expressing my concern that over the last few years we have seen a great deal of centralisation of Government services in Wales. We had a long battle in Porthmadog in my constituency about the proposal that the Department for Work and Pensions office should close, which it eventually did. Its functions have been transferred to a central office the other side of Bangor. That is an actual centralisation and an actual closure. Now we have the proposals to close HMRC offices all over Wales, particularly in Gwynedd, in Porthmadog and Bangor.
	I should also say that it is not just Government services that are being withdrawn from what are seen as peripheral communitiesthey are not peripheral to the people who live there, of course. I hear from my colleague, Alun Ffred Jones, the Assembly Member campaigning in the election in Bethesda, that two banks there, NatWest and HSBC, have closed. The fact that there are now no banks in Bethesda causes particular difficulties to local businesses with what one might think are trivial things, such as getting change in order to be able to give the correct change to customers.
	Public service jobs though, such as those in DWP and HMRC, are very valuable to rural communities in particular, where such opportunities are rare. They are steady, long term, pensionable and comparatively well paid in a local economy that is increasingly casualised and part-time. We see valuable jobs migrating to already prosperous centres. HMRC proposes to move jobs to Wrexham, Swansea and Cardiff, so that those centres will grow. That is part of deliberate Government policy.
	That raises the question of what sort of co-ordination has gone on between the Government here and the Welsh Assembly. The Welsh Assembly Government is working hard, using hard-won European money to create much needed jobs and prosperity in the west and in the valleys, and that investment is very welcome. At the same time, many good jobs that we need in our areas are being taken away by the policies of the Government here.
	An example that rankles with me is the likely fate of the Welsh language telephone line run from Porthmadog in my constituency. The line has highly experienced staff who have been running it for many years. That line is likely to move to Cardiff. As we all know, in Cardiff the labour market is very tight indeed, particularly in respect of those who have the valuable extra qualification of speaking Welsh. I am a member of the Welsh Affairs Committee, and last week we heard evidence from British Telecom, which told us that it recently advertised for a Welsh-speaking worker for a good job in Cardiff. There was not a single applicant, yet there are highly experienced people in Porthmadog who, for many years, have run a Welsh language telephone line, which is being shut down. That line is moving to Cardiff, whether or not there are the workers to run it.
	In Porthmadog, the staff can provide services in both languages. Two for the price of one is a slogan that works for supermarkets, but apparently HMRC does not see things that way. One has to ask the Government where the language planning is. Where is the co-ordination between HMRC and the Welsh Language Board? As far as I can see, there has been none, yet we are rushing onwards headlong. That is a failure of policy, as far as serving the people of Wales, particularly rural Wales, is concerned, and there has been a failure of co-ordination with Assembly policies, too.
	I should like to turn to a proposal on passport services that was little remarked on when it was made a couple of weeks ago. The proposal is that the first interview for passports should be conducted in centres in Wrexham, Swansea, Aberystwyth and Newport, and a face-to-face interview will be required. Interestingly, in the documents published, it was acknowledged that there would be difficulties in Anglesey, Gwynedd and Pembrokeshire, but the system that we are to have in Wales will involve centralisation in Wrexham, Swansea, Aberystwyth and Newport. What is to happen to people from Caernarfon, St. David's and Amlwch who want passports? We are told in the document that so-called remote areas will be served by webcam links. As I said earlier, remote from where? They are certainly not remote for the people who live in them. On the question of where webcam links will be established, the document says:
	A procurement exercise will be needed to establish the arrangement.
	In large parts of rural Wales, those proposals will be hard to live with, and the only remedy suggested so far is that a procurement exercise should establish the arrangements. That is just not good enough, as hon. Members on both sides of the House would agree.
	The other day, I undertook a little exercise: I phoned traveline, an excellent service that gives travel times for bus and train journeys throughout Walesand England, for that matter. The service is available in Welsh and in English; HMRC should note that. It is run from Porthmadog, just down the road from the place from which the tax line is run. Traveline gave me some times, and I can inform the House that it takes four hours and 35 minutes to get to Wrexham from Pwllheli by bus, and to get back takes six hours. The journey time from Caernarfon to Wrexham is three hours and 25 minutes, and on the way back it is four hours. Those are the sort of travelling times that will be imposed on new applicants for passports, unless the webcam exercise is successful.
	As I say, at the moment, the scheme is just a gleam in someone's eye; a procurement exercise will have to establish the arrangement. I shall give a couple more interesting times. Even from Bangor, travel time to Wrexham is an hour and a half, and the journey back takes an hour and 50 minutes by train. People from the constituency of the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) trying to get to the passport centre in Newport will have to travel by both bus and train, and the journey would take two hours and 10 minutes, and an hour and 50 minutes on the way back. The webcam links will be important, if and when they are established. Perhaps I am sceptical, if not cynical, in thinking that as the system is introduced those links will be quietly dropped. Scrutiny of a proposal that is little remarked on reveals a policy that is in danger of failing the people of rural Wales, and certainly fails to co-ordinate with the Assembly's policies.
	In the remaining minute or so, I should like to consider the development of policy in future. The Mental Health Bill will shortly be introduced in the Commons, and I hope that the Government will allow the Welsh Assembly the greatest latitude in the measure's application to Wales. Circumstances in Wales are different, and the health service, too, is different. The measure introduced by the Labour and Liberal Democrat Scottish Executive is markedly different from the measure proposed for Wales, and I think that we could do with the Milan principles that were included in the Scottish Bill. Finally, my Bilingual Juries (Wales) Bill is due to receive its Second Reading tomorrow, and I urge the House to give it proper consideration.

John Smith: I welcome the opportunity to speak, albeit briefly, in our St. David's day debate. St. David's day is a day of celebration for the Welsh people, and I shall focus on the announcement on 17 January that the new tri-service military academy, which has been mentioned, will be located in Wales, at St. Athan in my constituency. It is a matter of great celebration, not just for my constituents and south Wales, but for the whole of Wales, as it presents us with an unprecedented opportunity as the biggest ever public investment in any constituency in the UK.
	The hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) referred to the success of the Cardiff bay investment, but the investment in the military training academy will be 32 times the size of the Cardiff bay investment. It is worth 16 billion, so it is bigger than the total Olympic bid. As was pointed out to me earlier today, it is by far the biggest single investment since Edward I constructed his castles around the coast of our beautiful country. It offers the people of Wales a huge opportunity, not because of its size or value, but because of its nature. Numerous colleagues have referred to the challenge that we face in a global market of upskilling the Welsh work force and developing a knowledge-based economy. We could not wish for anything better than the investment, which will provide up to 12,000 military trainees with an enormous range of high-quality skills, including aeronautical engineering to mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer sciences, languages, photography and logistics. St. Athan will be a world centre of excellence for military training. Some people may think that that training is just for the military, but they could not be further from the truth. The success of our aerospace industry in south Wales has been predicated on the existence of the military aviation facility at RAF St. Athan for over 50 years.
	The spin-offs from the investment could be enormous, as long as we get our act together and get our act right. It presents us with considerable challenges. I have placed on record my thanks to colleagues in all parts of the House for their key contribution in ensuring that we secured the investment, and my thanks to the Welsh Assembly Government. Having worked so well together, it would be a big mistake for us to sit back now and say, Having won the 16 billion investment for Wales, let us just wait for all these wonderful jobs and opportunities to come to us. We should be doing the opposite. We have a three to five-year window of opportunity to get our act together to make sure that the people of my constituency, of south Wales and of the whole of Wales benefit from the investment.
	We should be setting up taskforces now in local business and industry, in our schools and colleges, and in our local authorities to ensure that we provide what is required to get the benefits of our success. Training programmes need to be thought about now to provide for the 5,500 direct jobs that will be created by the investment, not to mention the indirect jobs, of which there could be a far greater number if we get our act together now.
	We should be talking about developing a sourcing policy for the investmenta source Wales policy. By that I do not mean, as I have heard mentioned, that the company that comes in must buy Welsh goods, services, supplies, products and so on. But we should encourage the companies involved in the consortium to source first in Wales. The project will be like a new town created in the Vale of Glamorgan. If the products that the development requires, starting with day-to-day consumer goods and food, can be provided locally, of the right quality and at the right price, they should be purchased locally. That makes good business sense, if the consortium coming in knows what goods and services exist in the community.
	Over the next five years we can take practical steps to ensure that we benefit not just in the Vale of Glamorgan, but from Brecon to the coastline and from Monmouth to Pembrokeshire, if we work together as we worked together to secure the investment as team Wales. Now we must exploit all the benefits. One of the big challenges that we face is to provide the right infrastructure to access the site, especially by road. There will be a 600 acre site accommodating just the academy, with 10,000 to 15,000 personnel. The special forces support unit will run alongside that, and the aerospace park will be located within those 600 acres.
	The traffic generation from that development will be enormous, so we have to think about building or modernising the roads to facilitate the development and make sure that we get the most from it. We had a setback in February. The Welsh Assembly Government's plans to retrunk the A48 and the A4226 were lost at public inquiry. The inspector came out against the upgrading of the roads, which was an integral part of the proposal to secure the investment. We know that the roads in the immediate vicinity, 20 km from the M4, are not very good. I was very surprised to be told that an economic spokespersonor whatever he calls himselfin the Welsh Assembly stated on his blog last week that this was a sweet victory, yet we lost the opportunity to upgrade that access road. I found that hard to believe.

John Smith: I understand that to be the case.
	We must get our policy on roads right and we must do it now. I was delighted to hear Andrew Davis, the Minister for Enterprise, Innovation and Networks in the Welsh Assembly Government announce immediately that he was going to put public transport grants into the A4226 to upgrade this unsuitable, narrow and very dangerous road from the Port road in Barry up to the A48. We were pleased that that money was allocated, but it will not be enough. Consultants have now been invited quickly to produce proposals on direct access to the M4 to facilitate access to the military academy within the five years that it will take to construct and move into it.
	My plea this afternoon is for the Welsh Assembly GovernmentI hope that my Front-Bench colleagues will do whatever they can in supportseriously to consider whether the main artery for the academy could be the original airport link road, running west to east through the south of my constituency, now that the re-trunking of the A48 and the trunking of the A4226 has been blocked and scuppered. We must look into providing realistic alternatives.
	As the MP for this constituency, I do not rule out any option. We must provide the best road infrastructure so that we get the benefit from this development. If we do not do that, we will not get the benefit. Worse still, if we do not do it, the benefits will go to people outside our areathe suppliers to the main developers involved in building this 600-acre super-military university, which will be the best there is for military personnel in this country. If we are to meet the timetable and find a cost-effective way of providing a dual carriageway link to the military academy, the only option, in my opinion, is to upgrade the existing Port road, the A4050, to Culverhouse Cross and through to junction 33not junction 34of the M4.

David Jones: This has been a spirited and interesting debate. It is especially gratifying for hon. Members on both sides of the House that it is actually taking place on St. David's day. It is important that we should have this annual debate because it gives Members from Wales an opportunity to air issues of interest to the Principality.
	The Secretary of State opened the debate in his customary Tory-bashing vein, which sat rather ill with the sanctity of the day and what we know is his true persona as a home-loving Aga owner. That theme was developed by other Labour Members. One might even have thought that an election was approaching. We know, of course, that the Secretary of State's remarks were aimed over the heads of his audience in the Chamber today at the members of the parliamentary Labour party. We also know, from the Guido Fawkes website, that he has already attracted a great deal of support. I am sure that the inadvertent publication of his list of supporters will not damage his chances.
	Several themes developed during the debate and were aired by hon. Members on both sides of the House. The right hon. Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) spoke after the two Front Benchers, and his contribution was customarily statesmanlike and thoughtful. He touched on the important issue of security and policing, a theme of great importance in Wales and other parts of the UK recently. I was glad to see that at last the immigration and nationality directorate presence has been restored to Holyhead. Many hon. Members were concerned that for a long time there had been no immigration officers stationed permanently at Holyhead.

Nia Griffith: Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating Camford on the announcement that it has secured the future of its Llanelli factory? Due to hard work by the unions, my friend Catherine Thomas, AM for Llanelli, and the Assembly Government Minister for Enterprise, Innovation and Networks, Camford now has a secure base for the future of its car factory in Llanelli.

Nick Ainger: Absolutely. From the briefings that my hon. Friend has given me and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, I know how hard she has been working to ensure the continuation of that important manufacturing plant in Llanelli.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn stressed the absolute importance of our education system, and of skills not only for our existing work force, but for the young people who will be entering the work force. I was particularly pleased that in the building for a better Wales documents, the Labour party in Wales announced that it intends to set up a skills academy, which will serve young people going through our education system as well as giving hundreds of thousands of people who are already in work the opportunity to upskill, so that we can compete in the global market.
	Like many other colleagues, my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan emphasised the vital importance, and the huge opportunities for his constituency and constituencies throughout Wales of the 16 billion investment in St. Athan. That project will create jobs and be a university for skills. The private sector will be involved, but as my hon. Friend rightly said, infrastructure support will also be needed and I shall be discussing that issue with Andrew Davies shortly.
	The other main issue raised by Members on both sides of the House related to the proposed changes in Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. The hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan), my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy), the hon. Members for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik) and for Preseli Pembrokeshire, my hon. Friends the Members for Newport, West (Paul Flynn) and for Gower and the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) all raised that important issueI may have missed someone. I can tell the House that I met the Paymaster General on 15 January to discuss the concerns that have been expressed by Members from all parts of the House about the effect that there would on jobs and about the importance of having access to tax officers throughout Wales, particularly in our more peripheral areas.
	I also met with the Minister with responsibility for the civil service last week to discuss not only those matters, but the Lyons review and the transfer of civil service jobs from, in the main, the south-east of England to Wales. I have arranged a meeting in March between the Paymaster General, myself and the First Minister to discuss the issue again, because I think that there is a real opportunity for joined-up government to address some of the concerns that many Members have expressed. Members will be aware that the National Assembly is also moving its civil servants out of the Cardiff area to more peripheral parts of Wales, and we may be able to link up with that. This is a work in progress. I emphasise again to the House that no decisions have been made on any particular office and that there is a genuine consultation process under way. I hope that colleagues throughout the House will make their contributions.

Michael Howard: I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to raise a matter of great concern to my constituents and of much wider and more general significance.
	On 13 September last year, a serious fire broke out at Lympne primary school in my constituency. Most school fires occur when schools are closed, but this time the fire began at the beginning of the school day. In a very short time the school's buildings were gutted by the fire. The chief fire officer for Kent told me that
	it was mainly due to the prompt actions of staff and pupils that casualties were avoided.
	Two hundred and thirty children and their teachers were evacuated to safety. It could so easily, and so tragically, have been different.
	The chief fire officer went on to tell me that
	the incident...gave a graphic illustration of how quickly fire can take hold, and despite the best efforts of the Fire Service the school was destroyed. Clearly this had a devastating impact on the staff and on pupils and although there was no loss of life or serious injury, the long term effect has been considerable. As a consequence over 200 children had their lives disrupted and alternative education facilities had to be found.
	I live in the village of Lympne and when I visited the school I was shocked by the scale of the destruction. The school hall, where children and staff were attending morning assembly at the time the fire broke out, had totally collapsed. We owe a great debt to the professionalism and prompt actions of staff and the alertness of the child who first spotted the signs of fire. But we cannot presume that that will happen every time. According to the chief fire officer:
	The severity of the fire and the damage already caused prevented the firefighters from even entering the building.
	What if, for all the efforts of the school's staff, a child had been left in the building? That child might very well not have been rescued. He or she might not have survived.
	Yet there is one simple step that could be taken which could make a huge difference when fires occur in schools. As the chief fire officer said:
	If the school had been fitted with a properly designed and installed sprinkler system the fire may have been controlled if not extinguished in its early stages thus preventing the total loss of the school,
	and, I would add, making it much easier to save lives.
	I am glad to say that Kent county council has said that the replacement for the school buildings will incorporate a sprinkler system. The county council and Kent fire service are also in discussions with the aim of fitting sprinklers in all new and refurbished schools in the county in future. But I regret to say that such a forward-thinking approach is not the norm among our local education authorities.
	Even though lives are potentially at stake, even though more than 90,000 pupils a year have their education disrupted by school fires as a result of damage to classrooms and loss of coursework, school work, teaching notes and aids, even though 20 schools a week are affected by arson attacks, even though school fires last year cost us 74 million7 million up on the previous year and 25 million up on 11 years agoout of the United Kingdom's 30,000 schools, only around 250 have sprinkler systems.
	The financial cost of school fires is enormous. As I said, school fires cost Britain, in which there are 30,000 schools, 74 million last year, but in the United States, where there are about 150,000 schools, the cost was just 50 million. Why do school fires in the United States cost seven and a half times less, school for school, than in Britain? The answer is clear: following a series of major fires in the late 1950s, the United States introduced building codes to ensure the installation of sprinklers in almost all schools. The difference between the risk faced by schools with sprinklers and the risk faced by schools without them is striking: last year, not one United Kingdom school with a sprinkler system suffered a major fire.
	Sprinklers are 99 per cent. effective in controlling fires, normally with fewer than five sprinkler heads operating. That dramatically reduces the severity of fire damage to the school, and water damage is minimised because the fire is contained in the part of the school where it started. Crucially, the school can be back in use on the same day, rather than two years later, after it has been rebuilt, as is likely to be the case in Lympne.
	The Government are keen to tell us about the money that they have spent on school buildings. They have, for example, promised to refurbish or rebuild at least half of all primary schools over 15 years, but the refurbishments that have taken place have been completed under the existing building guidance and generally have not incorporated sprinklers. It has been argued that the cost of installing sprinklers is too high. Although the installation of sprinklers may well make up between 1 and 2 per cent. of total build cost, that can be offset. Sprinklers give greater design freedom to architects, who can use them to reduce other costs, and there is the potential for a major saving in insurance premiums, too. Schools with sprinklers can benefit from a three-quarters reduction in their insurance premiums, recouping any additional cost over time, and eventually actually saving money.
	Of course, in the event of a fire, the costs for a school without sprinklers is astronomical, quite apart from the potential loss of life. The insurance premiums will have been very high to start with, and the cost of rebuilding an entire school or a large part of it, instead of refurbishing perhaps a solitary classroom, is obviously very high. Also, there is a major expense to be met if children are to be educated at a different site for two years while work takes place. That is not only financially costly, but extremely disruptive to children's education. Teaching aids, coursework and class work are often destroyed. However dedicated children's teachers are, the very fact of being taught in temporary accommodation will inevitably severely disrupt their education.

Jim Knight: I congratulate the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) on securing a debate that he rightly described as timely.
	I have long been interested in the use of fire sprinklers to help overcome the devastating impact that fire can have on schools and elsewhere. I am a former patron of the national fire sprinklers network, and I served as a non-executive director of the Fire Protection Association until I joined the Government. I am therefore familiar with the problem and the scope of fire sprinklers to offer a solution to fire safety. I am familiar with the statistics cited by the right hon. and learned Gentleman. As I recall, there have not been any deaths in fires in buildings where a properly installed fire sprinkler system is in place. I am well aware of some of the myths, too. The Hollywood image of one sprinkler setting all the sprinklers off is not a reality, because sprinklers depend on heat bursting their glass filament sprinkler by sprinkler. I am familiar, too, with the evidence of the effectiveness of active measures in Scottsdale, Arizona and Vancouver, where sprinklers have been extensively installed.
	I listened carefully to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, who shares my concern about the issue. I am very sorry to hear of the fire that affected Lympne Church of England primary school in his constituency last year. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the firefighters who fought the blaze and to the head, governors, staff, parents and pupils, who not only had to deal with a traumatic experience at the time, but have had to cope with the upheaval to their education and their school community that has followed. I pay tribute to them for the ongoing work that they are doing as a result.
	Given how many hon. Members have seen the effect of school fires in their constituenciessmall bin fires occur fairly regularly in schools, but there was one in a primary school in my constituency a few years ago that caused serious damageit is no surprise that there has been widespread interest in the House, with over 100 signatories to the early-day motion calling for fire sprinklers in schools, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), whom I am pleased to see in his place.
	Earlier this week, as the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe mentioned, I was pleased to address the national fire sprinklers network and I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to bring our new policy on fire sprinklers to attention of the House. First, let me set out the scale of the problem.
	The number of school fires has decreased over recent years. Provisional figures for 2005 show that the number of deliberate fires in schools has approximately halved since 1996. I am aware that other fires, such as the one in the right hon. and learned Gentleman's constituency, are caused by other factors. Schools are generally very safe places, and so they should be. One is more than three times as likely to be injured in a supermarket fire than in a school fire, although we do not want any injuries from fires anywhere.
	Provisional figures for 2005 show that around one in 21 schools experienced a fire that year. The cost of those fires is not yet available, but in 2004, it was in the region of 52 million. It is estimated that between 55 and 65 per cent. of those fires are started deliberately. This causes immeasurable damage to the schools affected, as the community where the right hon. and learned Gentleman lives is discovering to its cost, with learning disrupted, facilities damaged, and coursework up in smoke.
	Despite the steady decline, there can clearly no be room for complacency. We must improve fire safety in schools, getting the balance right between active measures such as sprinklers and the passive measures with which we are more familiar, such as fire doors. That is why we have taken the view that all but the very low risk schools should have fire sprinklers, which have been proven to be an effective weapon against fires, including those started deliberately.
	However, we do not intend to make this a compulsory measure for all schools, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman anticipated. Although the vast majority of schools will find sprinklers a useful weapon against fire, there are a few, but only a very few, which are at low risk of fire. In those instances it would not be sensible in cost-benefit terms for schools to install sprinklers, and we do not want to force them down that route. Instead, we have to offer schools and local authorities clear and comprehensive advice to help them make the right decision on a delegated basis.
	Building bulletin 100, which was mentioned, will be published in early summer and will include extensive guidance to schools about the value of sprinklers, stressing their importance as a weapon against arson and clarifying our expectation that all but the few very low risk schools should adopt them. We have also developed new practical materials to help schools make the right decision.

Jim Knight: I was going on to say that we would help schools and local authorities to make that assessment using the new risk assessment tool to which he referred. We would point it out in the guidance. Following the letter that I received from all the chief fire officers in the land, which urged me to develop the use of sprinklers in schools, I put together a working group that included representation from the Chief and Assistant Chief Fire Officers Association and from across the fire safety and insurance industry, as well as our own officials and the Local Government Association, in order properly to analyse the cost and risk associated with fire. It is on the basis of consensus from that group that we developed this risk-assessment tool and the guidance on which we will consult.

Jim Knight: I cannot provide an exact figure, though I can repeat the phrase that there will be very few. I am coming on to say that we will write to MPs who signed the early-day motion. In many ways it will be a repeat of what I am telling the House now, but we will send a copy of the risk assessment tool on a CD, so that hon. Members can use it for themselves if they choose to and see what risk assessment would apply to the schools in their own constituencies.
	That tool will help a school to establish whether it is at high, medium or low risk, to decide on the action that it needs to take and to establish whether a fire sprinkler system is necessary. Similarly, a cost-benefit analysis tool will help schools to decide whether a sprinkler represents good value. In private finance projects, where it is easier to account for the whole-life cost of a building, lower insurance premiums mean that the cost of fire sprinklers is recouped within 10 to 12 years.
	I launched these new materials earlier this week, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman told us, and will ensure that they are properly disseminated to local authorities, all MPs and chief fire officers. The right hon. and learned Gentleman asked whether I could go further towards forcing the use of the tool. What I would say on that is that we will refer in the guidance to the need to use the tool to measure riskand it would be a foolish authority that ignored it and failed to have proper regard to that guidance. I would also say that I am still interested in whether there should be a presumption in favour of the use of sprinklers. It would then be up to authorities and schools to demonstrate to the community why not. However, I need to discuss and develop that further with officials before I take a final decision.
	The right hon. and learned Gentleman will be familiarhe referred to itwith the Government's unprecedented capital investment in school building. There has been as much school building in the past five years as in the previous 25 years. By 2020, we will have rebuilt or refurbished all secondary schools through Building Schools for the Future and half of all primary schools through the primary capital programme. That is why now is the right time to give fire sprinklers in schools a higher priority, as he said. Clearly, it is most sensible and cost-effective to install fire sprinklers as part of this building work rather than later on when the additional cost of retrofitting sprinklers can often be prohibitive.
	So the suite of guidance on building specifications for Building Schools for the Future will include a pamphlet on the specifications for fire sprinklers. We will consult industry on that pamphlet later on this spring, so that the document will be available in the summer. The right hon. and learned Gentleman referred to some of the delays around publishing some of these documents, guidance and so forth. It is very much informed by the work that has been going on with the fire safety industry, chief fire officers, the LGA and my officials, to whom I am grateful, because we wanted to ensure that we had secured consensus around both cost and risk. That is whybecause of the work that I instigatedthere has been something of a delay.
	I hope I have offered the right hon. and learned Gentleman my strongest assurances that this issue is of the utmost concern to me. I am taking robust action to raise the profile of sprinklers within schools in order to crack down on the problem of arsonand school fire more generallyand ensure that every school remains the safest possible place to be.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at half-past Six o'clock.